Shutdown Chronicles, Overseas Edition

We don't really have another choice but to live in the moment

First, welcome to new subscribers, and thanks for being here. To get a sense of what I write about, you might be interested in these two past posts in particular: one is a requiem for a $20 bill, which is about how I used to feel perpetually broke despite being educated and employed, and the other is more travelogue-ish, often what my public posts are like.

Paid posts are the deeper, more personal memoir work; about every third or fourth post has a paywall. Comments on all posts are paywalled because I don’t f— with trolls. Sometimes, I remove a paywall if a post is getting traction and seems to be resonating with people; providing access is important to me, but protecting myself is, too. As always, if you’d like a paid subscription and can’t afford one right now, please just message me. Especially public schoolteachers, federal employees, and anyone who works for an hourly wage: just ask!

Nate and I are in our second year in Libreville, Gabon; I wrote last week about how much I have changed as a result of being here. I’ve taken a long break from teaching writing at the small New England college where I’ve been a professor since 2001. I needed the rest, and I needed distance from and perspective on things that happened in my life during the tumultuous years of the pandemic, including my father’s sudden death and the end of my first marriage.

Because people come and go from post all the time (but summer sees the biggest changeover), Nate and I are now the seasoned ones here, despite this being our first tour with the Foreign Service. When we arrived, a lot of the folks at Embassy Libreville had extended their tours, largely because of the coup in 2023, so a core group of people had been in place together for longer than usual.

We were wide-eyed, a little overwhelmed at times; I had a hard time adjusting to the heat. Nate jumped right in to work and quickly discovered that management is management wherever you go. An embassy is like a small town, with all its moving parts, conflicting personalities, entrenched behaviors, but with a slight sheen of glamour, intrigue, and exclusivity, because security is so tight and because it is a somewhat elite group of professionals, from the Marine Guards who keep us safe to the specialists in various fields (IT, health, finance) to the career officers who had to navigate a rigorous screening process just to get in the door. I’ve noted in previous posts how refreshing it is to be around people other than academics, people who speak multiple languages (though I do not), people who have wide views of the world.

It’s also refreshing, and inspiring, to be around people who are capable, responsive, flexible, all qualities you need to survive in the Foreign Service. They’re tough, having dealt with adverse conditions at various posts around the world; they’re smart, because you have to think creatively and adapt constantly in this lifestyle. They’re also just people, regular people with quirks, regular people who get tired, regular people with remarkable resilience maybe, but that doesn’t mean they have endless psychological and emotional resources for dealing with nonsense on top of the regular challenges of serving their country in this way.

The power has been going on and off here multiple times a day for months now, and we’re preparing for a sustained city and possibly country-wide outage that could come at any time. The water has to be filtered or boiled and runs out on a regular basis; a water truck comes to our compound every day, sometimes multiple times a day, because there is a leak somewhere in the system. Mail, including packages, used to take 2-3 weeks, but due to budget cuts, can now take 2-3 months. We have to have medical clearances in order to even be here at post, because anything beyond a bout (or 7…ask me how I know) with food poisoning or other relatively minor ailments requires a medevac to Johannesburg, London, or Djibouti. I rolled my ankle a couple months ago and needed an X-ray; it took several hours to get the actual X-ray and then four days to get the results.

These inconveniences prepare us for sheltering in place, or going on authorized or ordered departure with our go-bags (the former means that you are permitted to leave post in advance of a normal rotation; the latter means you have to). We have MREs, lots of water, and solar lanterns that can charge our phones in the “keep,” the safe space in our house designated as such by the Diplomatic Security Service. I’m about to go do the monthly radio check, where I call into Post One and confirm with the Marine on duty that our radio works, that I know how to use it.

The shutdown of the U.S. government just makes all of this a lot harder, not just because no one is getting paid (we’re okay for now, and I know the community here will not let anyone fall through the cracks). It adds to the instability, the concerns that systems aren’t working the way they’re supposed to. It undermines the sense of security we need to have over here. It’s hard to be sure that we’ll be okay, that we’ll be taken care of if things go sideways for any reason: natural disaster, military action, another coup. That’s a lot to ask of people who have already sacrificed a lot to promote and protect American interests abroad. We miss holidays with families, graduations, special events. It can take anywhere from 12 to 48 hours to get back to the U.S. in case of an emergency.

In the best cases, this just adds to our resilience, but I worry about the cost. There are amazingly talented, thoughtful, dedicated people working in the Foreign Service, people who have chosen service to their country over more lucrative careers. If it keeps getting more difficult, if the budget keeps getting cut in ways that directly compromise our safety, we are going to lose these best and brightest, if the expected sacrifices become too great.

Here’s what’s going on at this post: we get together for meals in small groups. Families with children arrange playdates with each other. There are potlucks and sunset fires in the fire pit at the one residential compound that is on the beachfront, and happy hour fundraisers for the Marine Ball, which we now can’t have this year, because we can’t host outward-facing events during the shutdown (at many posts, the Marine Ball is a highlight of the international social scene). Instead, this year we will have the cake-cutting ceremony at the embassy to honor the 250th anniversary of the founding of the U.S. Marine Corps. I teach yoga every Saturday morning; everyone’s welcome and donations went to the Marine Ball until we realized we couldn’t have it; now any money that comes in goes toward spaying and neutering the feral cats on the embassy compound. We have some big-hearted animal-loving people here who are taking on that project and making it happen.

Last year was the first Marine Ball I got to attend and I found it very moving, from the empty place set for the thousands of Marines who have given their lives for the United States to the ceremony in which cake is served first to the guest of honor, and then to the oldest Marine present. The oldest Marine then gives their piece to the youngest Marine, symbolizing the passing down of knowledge and experience from one generation to the next. I’m glad we’ll be able to honor them in this small way, at least.

What’s both good and hard about this lifestyle is ironically what makes it possible: you’re asking people to give up what passes for normal life in the United States and build a life that is not based on place, but on change, constant change. If a post is particularly challenging, if the logistics or people make it especially difficult, you just have to wait it out: you’ll leave, they’ll leave, new people will come, you’ll go somewhere else. If you allow yourself room to grow, you become new versions of yourself all the time; your capacity increases, the conditions you can survive and thrive in change, nothing is static.

It’s inherently challenging in ways that can be exhilarating, but also in ways that grind us down. There’s a reason we get R&R at certain posts; the number of R&Rs depends on the level of hardship. We need to get out and remember who we are outside the context of the conditions at post, another example of why I no longer believe in the aphorism “wherever you go, there you are.”

Instead, I’ve come to embrace a Confucius quote that sounds similar but is critically different: “wherever you go, go with all your heart.” In other words: do your best to understand who you are, and live according to your values and passions. Draw on that authenticity to build resilience, to withstand the onslaught of cruelty and injustice in the world. Cultivate meaningful connections with other people, and fully commit to the moment you are in. It’s much more in line with the title and theme of this newsletter, No Half-Measures, which is a from a quote from Zorba the Greek, by Nikos Kazantzakis, a writer I encountered in high school.

And I think it describes a lot of the folks in the Foreign Service. The FS needs people who are willing to embrace life’s chaos and uncertainty. Zorba the Greek is about the contrast between the narrator’s contemplative inclinations and the way Zorba fully immerses himself in all the pleasures and sufferings of life, pushing for the authenticity of direct experiences over intellectualism and chiding the narrator for missing all that is right in front of him because of overthinking and then still not being able to understand how fleeting life is.

The irony, for me, is that I identify with the narrator but I want to be Zorba. My father used to reassure me that my desire to be and live a certain way could always overcome what sometimes felt like inherent characteristics or personality traits. I took that to mean that if I didn’t like something about myself, I could change it.

I think a lot, all the time, too much. I used to worry and catastrophize; I still worry a little, but I try to notice what I’m doing and accept it, instead of both worrying and hating myself for it. There are things I carry that are so heavy sometimes, a grief I want to put down but I don’t know how. Zorba said to the narrator, “One thing at a time in proper order. Right now we’ve got pilaf in front of us; let our minds be pilaf. Tomorrow, we’ll have lignite in front of us, so let our minds, then, be lignite. No half-measures – understand?”

Life is for living and experiencing, Zorba believed. Putting off pleasure is an ignorant rejection of the beauty of life; suffering and death is necessary and unavoidable, and so should joy be.

So I’m trying to channel Zorba in our lives here, focusing on daily pleasures like the coffee my husband brings me in bed every morning, the champagne we sip on the occasional afternoon, the soft, orange glow of Gabonese sunsets, the wide stream of bats swooping overhead on their nightly migration. When the challenges come, we’ll be fully present for them, fully immersed in what needs to be done. Today we’ll eat the pilaf so tomorrow, when it’s time, our minds, then, will be lignite.

You can listen to me read this post here: